caulfield12

Look at Ray’s longer term track record. Tons of walks and strikeouts, but before this season, he usually struggled to get out of the fifth. You can’t afford that risk at $30 million. In many ways, he’s a lot like Blake Snell, a talented but enigmatic/inconsistent performer who’s more of a luxury for Top 8 payroll teams. And from a marketing standpoint, his addition might not even mean more than ten additional season ticket packages sold. Just feels like spending that much on a guy in his FA push year is asking for trouble when he gets a multi-year or you have to overpay that dramatically for just 1-2 seasons.

Yes, and it’s hindsight, but it would have been better to spread the Keuchel outlay over two of those guys in the $8-10 million range…like the Giants did behind Gausman, in Wood and DeSclafani. T.Walker would have been another. Unfortunately, there’s just as many Wachas and Arrietas when you start diving into that tier of the market. If we took Paxton, we would have been screwed. Always comes back to pro scouting and talent evaluation/projection. Hard to see much evidence that Hahn or Haber are specialists in this area, but they at least have to bring the right people on board with that niche aptitude.

Well, that was out there well before the trade was made…but it does make a convenient excuse. Just not sure how well it reflects on the organization, ultimately.

Contreras trade isn’t going to happen for that return, and Ray at $30 million is way too big a risk…that’s almost 1/5th payroll. Also, the Dodgers will get May back next year in the second half, no need to bloat their payroll when they will have some flexibility with Bauer, Kershaw (maybe), Scherzer and K.Jansen coming off. They are going to be financially astute with their tweaks, and won’t go back to all-in if they’re still struggling at the trade deadline. Could even retrench and auction off Trea Turner and do a retool on the fly, which Friedman hasn't faced doing since his TB days. They do have to decide what to do with Bellinger…with Muncy coming back.

And about his bordering on proselytizing Christianity rubbing some the wrong way....which should have been taken into consideration by those who looked into his background when you're investing that much in a player.

Well, that and $100 million more in OD payroll...remember, Dodgers also lost May for the season as well. Duffy was never healthy after they added him. Pretty sure there was another veteran add who gave them close to nothing as well.

Robert and Konerko?

You’re going to move Moncada to second or trade him to another team? Because he makes zero sense for the A’s unless they think he can return to 2019 form (in that stadium?) and they can flip him again before the contract catches up to their payroll restraints on the backside. And Chapman is coming off a disappointing season offensively to boot.

The White Sox, if Bellinger returns to MVP form, but it would only be for 1-2 years, I think. Lux isn’t surefire anymore, but would be at second. Really don’t see them needing to absorb those massive per year deals for Keuchel and Kimbrel…and they’re selling low on Bellinger without giving him another half season to re-establish value. Of course, the Dodgers would turn Crochet into another Urias somehow and we would hate Price as much if not moreso than Keuchel at this stage of his career and with his health history.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/player/_/id/32767/matt-olson Do you go crazy and trade Vaughn, Crochet and Burger for Olson? Sheets would obviously be another name since the A's would be looking for LH cost-controlled replacement. But would Sheets, Crochet and Burger really be enough? If the window is really only 2-3 years, or they don't plan on approaching $200 million payrolls, this is one of the only ways to add a big bat without breaking the bank. It's also the type of all-in move that Hahn might shy away from after the Kimbrel debacle. You can't afford for him to be another Dunn and go into the tank. I'm not sure how you get this done without Vaughn or Jimenez, either.

That's if you believe the Giants are built to last and/or Kapler/Faidi are superhuman...tons of vets and expiring deals the next year or two.

Typical Iowa, probably 3-2 or 2-3. They desperately need a dual-action QB. Not a statue.

Should do: Name Fathom and Dick Allen as humor specialists/mediator mods Crowdfund JR out of existence by doing a SoxTalk SPAC or NFT (banner art) Do a huge Squid Games promotion, opening the GRF up for a Halloween Haunted House Experience. Will do: Reopen the politics section next mid term elections, then regret that decision within 48-72 hours. Sign players that end up contributing negative fWAR cumulatively. Be accused of carrying water for management, as well as looking down on AARP members. Dune promotion goes awry when khaki Desert Storm Sox unis clash with visiting Dbacks garb. Chris Sale returns with Boston the following week to cut those uniforms up as well, complaining about the amount of give in the fabric.

Name KylLe, Ray Ray and Ron883 a three-headed Ghidorah the GM kaiju.

"Some" being the operative word here..."lots" would mean starting the season with him on the OD roster and returning to first half form. But as a set-up man unless Hendricks asked to change roles to accommodate Kimbrel. Pretty unlikely.

Where did I once say the entire season that he was good? I didn't. Go back and look through every single post. I said he wasn't getting benched on that team in that moment. Did I say it was a miscarriage of justice he wasn't on the All-Star team or that he was criminally underrated like Ketel Marte? No. Ultimately, adding Frazier, who performed like Cesar Hernandez, cut time from 6-7 guys and that overkill created a lot of grumbling when they didn't manage to add a starter while LA was making the Scherzer and Turner moves to bury them.

Wow...never caught that at all. As someone who lived there for ten years in KC when the team was the absolute laughingstock of baseball (1998-2007), it was a nice story for the sport and a team without a playoff appearance in thirty years to pull off what they did without a large payroll. And they helped revolutionize modern bullpen management...a niche that worked with a limited budget but has exacerbated game lengtgs, leading to 4 1/2 hour playoff games.

Great, all the aging vets with big names. KW should just take over the reigns again with that philosophy.

I never even liked Hosmer that much, compared to Perez and Cain and watching guys like Dyson and Gore fly around the bases. They (the Royals) absolutely owned second and third base if they got on in the last 2-3 innings...as did their bullpen with three closers at the back end. The White Sox, despite lots of guys with speed (see MLB stolen base leader Hamilton) and the most expensive pen in history never managed to approximate that on either front. My only argument was that he wasn't going to be benched after the trade deadline. In reality, Prefer and Kim and the outfielders all saw the biggest reduction in playing time. They could have simply moved Myers to first, or Cronenworth, but they didn't do that as Ray ray predicted over and over and over again...simply basing his analysis on fWAR/bWAR numbers that never are going to look all that great for 1B/DH types. The fact that they threatened to trade him (and didn't) was one of the major reasons that once-tight clubhouse started to come apart, along with not adding more pitching and virtually the entire offense outside of Machado and Tatis falling apart, especially with RISP, the last 6-7 weeks.

Would you really count on a good offensive year from him if you look at that completely unpredictable stat line? It's like we are deliberately playing with fire adding him or Conforto...hoping to hit on these discounted guys when there's almost no record of the Sox being able to make the right evaluations or projections.

I don't see what the point of mocking him is when he pretty much meant the same to KC as Konerko did to the White Sox...and it's not like the Sox are in a position to be looking down on World Series-winning players. Just like St. Louis with Pujols a decade ago, mid or small market teams are better off not making emotional signings after playoff successes. Look at KC with Alex Gordon, or the Sox keeping Contreras and Konerko way too long. Btw, we almost had a deal for Alex Gordon that would have turned out to be a massive mistake with pretty much the same line of thinking that went into the Hosmer to SD, or Cain to Milwaukee. Leadership...

Let's pull up the Keuchel signing thread and see who was really jacked that we made that signing? Because he was pretty much the only option remaining on the table at that point....

Why would we give possibly give Hosmer a contract when we already had what now amounts to six 1B on the roster, if you include Collins (who was still in the picture then)...? Not to mention we actually needed Wheeler the most. And that's actually a pretty good reminder how much we have wasted at 1B/DH since 2011...you can make fun of that signing, but it wasn't much worse than the friends and family plan with washed up Machado relatives. Btw, any contract where you're actively rooting for the option year not to vest in early Year 2 is probably not all that great...certainly not at nearly $20 million per year.

Keuchel always was going to be an overpay...basically, for that one 2020 season. But he was the VERY back-end of that FA pitching market, at least in terms of the A Tier. I guess you can argue that Castellanos was almost a hitting version of that, not elite, but a very high quality hitter...obviously younger, of course.

Surely they had INTEREST, but not in that price range. We have a track record of almost never buying a FA at peak value...other than maybe Dunn and Robertson, although Cabrera, Grandal and LaRoche fit as well.